Wrong
by ongreenergrasses
Summary: That level of genius is wrong.


**Okay, I have been writing nonstop. It's beyond weird. I am not sure where it's all coming from, but whatever. I had a serious unformed idea attack yesterday (migraine included) and coupled with four cello recitals in twenty-four hours and a Cryptography final that is embarrassingly late, I had to have an emergency Sherlock-watching session to keep from completely exploding and this is the result.  
>Written to "Strange" by Tokio Hotel &amp; Kerli, which is just maybe my national anthem. I LOVE this song. It is the best accidental purchase I have ever made.<br>Disclaimer: If the hours I played my cello this weekend were gold, I still wouldn't be able to afford this wonderful show.  
>Warnings: Lots of angst with description of a breakdown. Swearing, very lame allusions to sex, and not much else to go on.<strong>

Every genius has something wrong with them, period. Their minds are just not right. They are bipolar or mildly autistic or schizophrenic or something else that has no name. It's easy to forget that, and to just accept them for their brilliance. But sometimes that one flaw, that one little mutation in the cerebral cortex, reemerges for the worse.

Sherlock was never diagnosed. People have always seen him as a freak, as abnormal and not worth their time. He has many mental disorders, John is sure, but no one ever took the time to label him. Not that he could be labeled, ever.

John has never seen his flatmate as something that is wrong. Brilliant and completely mad, yes. But not wrong. He's not wrong, he isn't – he just is who he is. John doesn't ask him to be more than he can be, and if he does, well, it's not usually enough to push him over the edge.

John doesn't know what it was. He is in every way a perfectly average, perfectly normal man. He has post-traumatic stress disorder, but it was all but cured the moment he stepped over the threshold of 221B Baker Street. He has never had a breakdown and does not know what it feels like.

He didn't see anything out of the ordinary during that day. Nobody did anything particularly mean or stressful or gruesome that day. It was just an ordinary day – well, as ordinary as days with Sherlock Holmes ever get.

He cannot tell you why, when he came downstairs in the night after hearing a series of strange noises, he found Sherlock curled up in the middle of the room, sobbing and shaking and tearing at his hair and surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of pages that had been ripped out of books.

Sherlock is not right, John knows that.

But goddammit, he loves that man for who he is and to see Sherlock like that, screaming and reduced to nothing but a wild animal, breaks his heart.

...

Sherlock wouldn't let John touch him.

He had his legs drawn in tight to his chest with his arms locked around them so hard his knuckles were turning white, his forehead resting on his knees as he cried. John tried to touch him, of course he did, but Sherlock shuddered rather violently and John quickly pulled his hand away.

John couldn't do anything. He couldn't say anything, couldn't move him, couldn't do anything to take away some of the pain.

So he just sat there on the floor cross-legged next to the consulting detective for more than an hour, waiting until his sobs quieted and he stopped rocking back and forth.

John had never had to deal with a nervous breakdown before and had no idea what the standard procedures were. But as soon as Sherlock lifted his head off his knees and John saw the tear-stained face with the wild eyes, John knew. Oh, he knew.

He grabbed that man and pulled him into his lap, God help him, and just rocked him as he cried. John held onto Sherlock with every ounce of strength in his body and just hoped that he was doing something right, because he couldn't stand to see Sherlock broken like this.

They sat there for hours, Sherlock hysterical and screaming and sobbing, John rocking them back and forth to offer himself comfort as much as Sherlock. They sat there all night until Sherlock fell asleep from the sheer exhaustion that follows your brain's shutdown, which was when John finally began to relax and then fell asleep too.

The sun pouring in through the windows of the flat was what woke them, surrounding them both in a halo of light. The room didn't look so bad by daylight, but you could tell that something had gone very, very wrong in there. Sherlock fast asleep, curled up like a four-year-old in John's lap, John leaning against the armchair and snoring into Sherlock's hair. They were surrounded by what would seem to be a small rainforest of paper.

It was difficult to say who exactly woke up first, but one minute they were both asleep and just a few minutes later they were both awake. They sat there, pretending the other was asleep, just because everything felt so wrong and so right at the same time and they were afraid to move and didn't particularly want to move.

But then Sherlock hiccupped extremely loudly and John burst out into a loud and frankly very embarrassing attack of the giggles, and then they were both laughing almost hysterically but it didn't matter, because as long as Sherlock was laughing John didn't care.

Eventually, they both calmed down enough to talk and that was when Sherlock coughed and said rather huskily, "Thank you."

"What for?" John asked, tactfully ignoring the fact that he, the absolutely straight army veteran, had his gorgeous six-foot flatmate completely at his mercy in his lap.

"For coming."

John would normally not have interpreted this as dirtily as possible, but after so little sleep and so much stress, he failed miserably and burst out into another laughing attack. Sherlock looked as irritated as is possible for a thirty-year-old man who is sitting in his flatmate's lap in the middle of the day, wearing pyjamas and a disgusting old bathrobe.

"John, in my experience it always ends badly for people to interpret other's statements as potentially suggestive and is frankly, quite a waste of brainpower."

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

"Thank you. For coming downstairs and…well, what you did. That was a bit good."

John interpreted this to mean, _Thank you for keeping me from destroying the house and making me feel even remotely better after I suffered a synaptic breakdown_. He would deal with this later, however – there was a more pressing issue at hand.

Genius doesn't happen overnight. That is to say, those anomalies in Sherlock's brain? They haven't just developed.

"Sherlock, hang on a minute. You don't mean to tell me that this has happened before and nobody has heard you?"

Sherlock smiled wryly.

"They heard me, John. Nobody could be bothered to come help me."

John was half reeling in shock at this statement and half reeling in shock that Sherlock had actually used the phrase 'help me'. "So nobody…"

"They didn't care, John, there's no point in glorifying it. They did not care whether I lived or died or ripped three thousand first editions to shreds."

They both sat there in silence for a while, John processing this information and Sherlock feeling generally numb and wondering if he would have to ever move, because really, it was quite nice sitting here in John's lap. Sherlock then began to fall back asleep, and would have passed out if it hadn't been for…"Sherlock?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you going to be all right now?" John mentally kicked himself for asking such an idiotic question, but then again, it wasn't exactly a normal day.

Sherlock sighed and snuggled further into the very warm, very solid body that he was currently sitting on. "John, I'm not right and I never will be."


End file.
